The Lane Cove West Business Park on Sydney’s north shore is a sleepy little place, but inside one of its buildings, behind these doors, something very high-tech is being created. Rockwell Collins Australia, a subsidiary of its American parent, is hard at work building an integral part of the world-class sensor suite that goes into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

18 February 2015

Image Cache:A United States Air Force (USAF) B-2A Spirit stealth bomber (background) comes into land following a mission during Exercise RED FLAG 15-1, with a USAF F-22A Raptor (foreground left) and F-15E Strike Eagle (foreground right) on the flightline at Nellis Air Force Base.

29 December 2014

The search has resumed for a missing Singapore-bound AirAsia flight QZ8501 which lost communication with ground control while flying over the Java Sea, an hour before it was supposed to land 24 hours ago. Australia is now joining the search effort with this high-tech RAAF plane.

7 July 2014

Flying a fighter jet has to be one of the few activities that triggers both excitement and terror. I’m sure a trained pilot experiences the former more than the latter, but I can only imagine the nerves needed to successfully dock with a tanker craft in mid-air. If you’re curious as to how such a manoeuvre is conducted, here’s a clip showing two F/A-18s hooking up with a KC-130, near the Royal Australian Air Force base in Tindal, Northern Territory.

23 April 2014

According to several reports, Prime Minister Tony Abbott will today formally announce that Australia will buy 58 more F-35 Joint Strike fighters — bringing the planned F-35 fleet to 72 aircraft in total. The first Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is slated for delivery in 2018 ahead of RAAF operation in 2020. But as technically advanced as the stealthy 5th-gen F-35 is, the program has also had its fair share of ups and downs. Let’s take a brief look…

14 April 2013

Turns out Australia isn’t a bad place to test your secret, supersonic drones! Well, at the very least BAE Systems is keen to put its unmanned “Taranis” stealth UAV through its paces by scooting around the atmosphere above Woomera in South Australia.

5 September 2012

As if the new data retention proposals weren’t enough to get you breaking out your tin foil hat, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has revealed that it wants to put seven massive surveillance UAV drones into active service by 2019.

7 August 2012

It was just another ordinary morning in June, 1983 when Queensland dairy farmer Robin Priete looked up and saw something strange hovering in the sky. He phoned local police, who had it described to them as a large white light with flashing lights surrounding it. Normally the police would have written this off as a hoax or dismissed it as a crazy claim, but that’s when three separate people reported seeing the same thing in the night sky. Elsewhere, the Air Force had seen it too, and started to get crews into their fighter jets to respond. Welcome to Australia’s X-Files.

11 March 2009

Score another one for Australians after inventing the didgeridoo and koala teddies: Their Air Force just got the first missile that can kill enemy fighters behind their F/A-18s, converting the hunter to (dead) prey.